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Not at all surprised, nor do I mind changes. That was a bit wasted potential, though. They gave Dany something interesting to do, which is good, and then it climaxes in her taking a stroll through an abandonded watchtower and setting fire to the malnourished fetishist with low blood pressure that lives in it.

Edit: Ok, I'm just being snarky and a bit nitpicky here. Pyat Pree is done and acted quite well, but he does not nearly appear as powerful as he should here, in his home base. There was no sense of real danger for dany.

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I thought The way they did Theons story arch was well done despite certain changes. I assume everyone knew the bastard of Bolton was the one with 500 men outside of winterfell. So I'm guessing the iron born gave up Theon in exchange for their lives? Perhaps he becomes reek a bit earlier then expected? And we will be introduced to Ramsay next season?

Thoughts on the HOTU?

What did the throne room mean?

The wall....her possible connection with Jon snow? Fuck! I have to re-read COK!

I thought it felt rushed. When I heard a baby crying I got so excited I almost shit myself. Mainly bc I thought they were going to show Rheagar and Elia giving birth.

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I thought The way they did Theons story arch was well done despite certain changes. I assume everyone knew the bastard of Bolton was the one with 500 men outside of winterfell. So I'm guessing the iron born gave up Theon in exchange for their lives? Perhaps he becomes reek a bit earlier then expected? And we will be introduced to Ramsay next season?

Thoughts on the HOTU?

What did the throne room mean?

The wall....her possible connection with Jon snow? Fuck! I have to re-read COK!

I thought it felt rushed. When I heard a baby crying I got so excited I almost shit myself. Mainly bc I thought they were going to show Rheagar and Elia giving birth.

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I thought that taken as a whole, this was a great season. There were also a lot to love in this episode as well. The dragon fire was absolutely amazing, and it was nice to see Brienne kicking ass as well. The relationship between Shae and Tyrion has grown even more complex and enjoyable than even the books at this point, and I personally liked the addition of Jason Mamoa even though it was vastly different than what happened in the books. I would like to have seen glimpses of other visions though...

I finally found a scream out loud and flip over a table moment though, and it was Rob's wedding. There is plausible explanations for almost every faux paux and mistake in the writing up to this point, but to set a wedding scene and not know what gods either of the characters in the scene worship is just blatantly lazy. I don't understand how this was let through. I am watching the show with a bunch of the unsullied, and I had to pause it to go on a rant.

Twin's horse shitting in the throne room was a perfect shot, and Sophie Turner and Natalie Dormir did amazing jobs as the betrothed girls with Jackie Gleeson again playing an impeccable little shit. Allen Alfie was incredible. I also think they show, just as the books gave the possibility of Luwin being still alive. (Hooded man in Winterfell anyone?"

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1) WHERE IS GHOST!?! I know, i harp on this every week, but it literally makes no sense in the story that there is no Ghost -- it makes sense budget wise since how do you make a cgi dw attack someone realistically, but to not have him there at all, I just don't understand it.

2) HOTU -- this was ok for me. I didn't think that drogo scene was amazing, honestly -- but the rest was fine. i am actually in the minority of people who are glad they didn't visualize the prophecies -- i had been hoping they wouldn't because some shit would've been way too obvious -- a wolf head on a guy dead at a wedding? hello super telegraphing. i mean, granted, they're already telegraphing a bit with the whole "cant betray a frey!" thing and newbies seem to think he'll die for it, but i'm glad they aren't totally spoiling it is mainly how i feel about it. when she went to the wall though, i thought we'd see a blue flower! otherwise, that was random...

3) jaqen+ arya=awesomeness. although the new guy/makeup (i think it was a new guy cos the voice was different) made me sad b/c i love Tom W. you will be missed...maybe he can wear jaqenface whenver we see him killing people in the series.

4) winterfell -- i liked that whole sequence. they will bring in ramsay and some people are already predicting that that's what happened -- granted, they weren't going to be able to show the razing w/o the whole subplot, which was a bummer, but i'm glad we get our reek and ramsay. cried when luwin died after talking to the boys...couldn't help it even though i knew it was coming. i sort of got on the "maybe they'll keep him alive" bandwagon after no reeds, but then once they were confirmed for season 3, i figured he'd die -- so as soon as he walked out after dagmer hit theon over the head, i thought, there goes luwin...but still cried! nice work GOT.

5) north of the wall -- i think they fucked this up way worse than dany's storyline. my newbie friends had no idea that qhorin egged jon on to kill him to become a double agent -- they just thought qhorin suddenly hated jon and tried to kill him. such a totally unnecessary way to do it -- of all the things they make blatant, to make this one subtle seemed like a huge mistake -- some newbie reviews think jon is now FREE from the night's watch and wonder what he'll do next! that is just a failure of the team. and it makes no sense whatsoever. the amount of time and money it would've taken to clear this up is very minor -- compared to how fucked up this makes jon look and how people will always wonder whether he is a double agent or just an opportunist -- he leaves the nw to join teh wildlings when that's the only way then joins the nw again -- maybe at that point it will make more sense that he was a double agent, but i dunno -- it just seems too random.

i don't understand why they did it that way and now i really wonder whether ghost is ever coming back?!!? is it just b/c they were up in the mountains and ... ghost couldn't follow? as long as he comes back, i don't care what their reasoning is. i presume he will come back, but what if he doesn't??? i can't see that happening. i mean i can, but i will be super bummed. ghost is literally my 3rd favorite character in the whole damn series. (which i know is very weird).

7) the white walkers looked so bad i cringed. super bummed. i liked the weird black ones way better -- they looked way more mysterious and cloaked and creepy. these reminded me of like a skeletor zombie and agree that it makes no sense not to kill sam immediately and there's no way sam is getting out of there w/o some absurdly contrived storyline. what? he kills the horsed white walker and the wights are just like ok nevermind we're out.

8) i didn't love tyrion/shae's scene -- i loved how now the whole 'they're in love' story is now very clear and will be very painful, but something about it was ... off. maybe it's just the fact that i know her feelings and i can't watch tyrion love her instead of it being a problem w/peter and sybill (?)'s chemistry.

9) the doreah betrayal was a cool surprise, and i liked how they are starting to make dany ruthless and fucked up...and regardless of how terrible doreah's betrayal was -- locking her in an empty vault w/one other person, who will likely eat her b/f he dies of starvation/dehydration -- was just another level of fuckeduppedness that is totally the dany i have come to dislike.

10) brienne was bamf and the scene with them trying to pass jaime off was hilarious and then the dude asking them to count to 3 and then say his name at the same time was friggin genius. also, the whole, if i'd known i was jaime lannister, i wouldn't have had to steal that pig bit was awesome.

so if i added it up:

KL +1

Winterfell +5 (with extra points to theon's hilarious diatribe about the horns; and luwin's death scene. and b/c at least bran and rickon's direwolves still exist)

HoTu +1

north of the wall -10

stannis +1

robb/talisa 0

jaqen/arya + 5

jaime/brienne +4

all in all, a pretty mixed bag

Edited June 4, 2012 by summer_stark

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Not at all surprised, nor do I mind changes. That was a bit wasted potential, though. They gave Dany something interesting to do, which is good, and then it climaxes in her taking a stroll through an abandonded watchtower and setting fire to the malnourished fetishist with low blood pressure that lives in it.

Edit: Ok, I'm just being snarky and a bit nitpicky here. Pyat Pree is done and acted quite well, but he does not nearly appear as powerful as he should here, in his home base. There was no sense of real danger for dany.

I think the show writers were in a bind with Dany and S1/S2. If they stayed true to the books her storyline would have been pretty boring(or difficult to convey) in a visual medium. Dany gains inner strength during this time, but the only external struggles she faces are her minor scrap with Viserys and MMD. The book HotU reveals the prophecies and Dany's destiny, but the visual action is fairly tame. Her defeat of the warlocks is mostly by accident, and is carried out by Drogon.

The kidnapping plot was a good attempt to make it work better on TV, but the showdown with the warlocks kind of flopped. Dany stumbles around in the tower, with the warlocks letting her into the super-dooper-magic vision room for a while, then they bind her. Didn't make much sense, or have much tension. Maybe the warlocks underestimated her?

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Umm, in Sam's last scene, were those _Others_ on the horses, or wights? The one that stared at Sam looked nothing like the S1 other. Hell, he looked like he was half tree.

It seems to me they were all wights before. Meaning, unlike the first book's Prologue, we've never actually seen an Other until the last scene aired tonight. Several things about that scene were different as it is, so that's my basis for that assumption.

I was hoping for "cracking ice" voices, though. The noise it made didn't sound otherworldly enough to me. ;) I think the Other itself looked great! It certainly didn't look human. Can't wait to see what they do with the Children of the Forest, now that I think about it...

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I think the show writers were in a bind with Dany and S1/S2. If they stayed true to the books her storyline would have been pretty boring(or difficult to convey) in a visual medium. Dany gains inner strength during this time, but the only external struggles she faces are her minor scrap with Viserys and MMD. The book HotU reveals the prophecies and Dany's destiny, but the visual action is fairly tame. Her defeat of the warlocks is mostly by accident, and is carried out by Drogon. The kidnapping plot was a good attempt to make it work better on TV, but the showdown with the warlocks kind of flopped. Dany stumbles around in the tower, with the warlocks letting her into the super-dooper-magic vision room for a while, then they bind her. Didn't make much sense, or have much tension. Maybe the warlocks underestimated her?

Not sure if you meant to disagree, but that's mostly what I meant, yup. The writers meant well, precisely because introducing a visual struggle was necessary for the tv. And the magic-dragon-dany link as motivation for taking her and keeping her alive was plausible. But the execution was a bit lacking, especially after the Battle of King's Landing was so awesome.

Edited June 4, 2012 by Rabbity

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Yeah, the topper to the shit Robb/Talisa story was the wedding with the wrong gods. I understand why they wanted to beef up Robb's story this season, but it didn't work. I was trying to give it the benefit of the doubt, but now that the season is over, I guess the time for that is over.

I was so dissappointed that we didn't get Robb/Cat's reaction to the news of Bran and Rickon's 'death'. Did I miss that along the line? Instead of giving us Talisa's backstory about why she wanted to be a healer, couldn't that have been time for Robb to react and grieve? It would still lead to sexy time, but it would have added a lot more than getting us to care about a throw away character. And I still don't understand why the hell she had to be foreign. It makes her more interesting (supposedly anyway) but it's not her job to be interesting. Make her the daughter of a minor Lord in the Riverlands if her family doesn't matter in the show version, but ... ugh. Did not like.

Dany's story this season was not great. I know there was not much to work with, but even with adding extra conflict it did not work for me. The whole HotU didn't have any emotional impact for me. I am not getting into the whole visions and prophecy thing, what was shown/left out, but just as a whole I wasn't invested.

In the show I like that Shae seems to love Tyrion, but I do miss the book Shae and Tyrion's delusions about her. I am not sure which is more tragic for Tyrion down the line.

Edited June 4, 2012 by Gertrude

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don't forget Pycelle, she was spying on Pycelle last season as his "special guest star" They might as well put her on the Small Council as she's on first name basis with LF, Pycelle, Varys, Tyrion and Joffrey.

Tywins horse shit in the throneroom

that was a funny scene, but in looking back over the season, I am starting to think that was a message to the longtime readers / fans of ASoIaF. :-\

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I can't help but assume that Robb being married in the light of the Seven is a major plot point in the tv show. I'm not sure why but it had to be done for a reason, right? That's really my only nitpick. I liked this episode.

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- Littlefinger being awfully open about helping Sansa; why was Dontos introduced at all, I wonder?

I remember reading somewhere that Dontos had scenes that were filmed but not put in. I think they just made a casting blunder and the actor couldn't give them what they needed when they got to editing. He was a really shitty Dontos in the first episode.

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A lot of people here seem to be confusing wights and the White Walkers. The guy on the dead horse was a White Walker, the rest were wights - reanimated dead people. They were dark and in black in the Prologue to Season 1 because they were mostly reanimated dead members of the Night Watch, whereas in the last scene of Season 2, they are in white because they are mainly reanimated Wildlings.

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I'll have to see if I have the same impression when I watch it again but I actually liked the White Walkers. Nothing at all like I pictured them from the books but they really gave this feeling of crawling straight out of winter.

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And the wight army was pretty creepy and menacing ... at first. The more they showed it, the less menacing it seemed. I mean, I liked the horse and the close up of the WW, but I think a glimpse rather than a lingering shot would have been better, and definitely more fog. It's hard not to compare it to the Walking Dead when you see it rather than imagine it, but I think being more vague and shadowy would have worked better.